well into the future. it's technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got the future covered. breaking news the foreign media office is coming under attack from israel which maintains it's only targeting terrorists. among the targets also with e.g. comes as the civilian death toll mounts with more children among those killed. and other stories from this week israel's troops exchanged with syria where the rebels are gaining more support from the west to get rid of the assad regime. the eurozone sinks back in recession as take to the streets in the first chord major european strike to demand an end to a sturdy. china finishes its once in a decade power transfer with new leaders taking over the country's top post we find out what challenges lie ahead for beijing.

in the back of the past seven days top stories in the latest developments this is the weekly on t.v. and we start with breaking news this hour for reporters in gaza are a force to scramble is that office is a targeted by israeli bombs several journalists have been wounded says it wants to send gaza back to the middle ages and is preparing a ground invasion while militants retaliate with guided rockets. has the latest. what we're witnessing is a significant climb in the casualty count and increasingly more and more of these casualties are in fact civilians now they will really have to stick with it cool to holdings but who also hit by israeli missiles at least six people have been injured one of whom is a come a man who later had to have his leg amputated the i.d.f. the israeli defense forces has said that the journalists were not afraid target but

that they were aware that there were journalists in these buildings and a statement released by the i.d.f. it said that a communications antenna used by how much to target israelis was in fact their target but the thing is that you have in these media houses international journalists and the israeli army is fully aware of that fact we also are aware that in one of the buildings all sister organization. offices were completely destroyed in the strike unfortunately just an hour before his staff members had gone home we are now however receiving reports that the journalists and people inside these two buildings have been ordered again to evacuate we all receive in the course of the israeli air force plans to strike these buildings again it's not something that the israeli air force is denying in fact they have stated that the army eight for one of these buildings is the office of have nots and that this is ultimately a target now the leaders of hamas have gone into hiding they are fearing for their lives this comes as

a statement from israel's interior ministry that the goal is to stand and i'm quoting here because a back to the middle ages these signs so you do dictate that a full scale ground invasion could be imminent we heard earlier from the israeli defense force chief has ordered to increase the number of sorties being fired against militants inside gaza some sixteen thousand israeli reservists have been called out they are all in the south of the country ready to enter gaza if indeed they are given the order to do so now london has warned israel not to launch a ground offensive saying that the country will lose a lot of international support if indeed it goes. ahead and does this but what we have witnessed in the past is that israel by and large often does what it wishes to knowing full well that the united states is there to support it and so many people here don't believe that the united states would withdraw its support for israel at this stage at his weekly cabinet meeting in jerusalem the israeli prime minister on sunday morning also said and i'm quoting here that he is ready to significantly expand the israeli operation into gaza service so he does send out alarm bells and

raise questions as to whether or not this ground offensive is imminent there has been a lot of movement of tanks as well as on the personnel vehicles along the israeli gaza border we've witnessed artillery shelling from these tanks also all the roads around gaza have been closed off by the israeli army now the arab league hold an emergency session on saturday in cairo where the arab league secretary general accused israel of war crimes he also called on arab states that had any kind of peace treaties in place with israel to revisit this we are witnessing a flurry of international activity trying to mediate between the two sides to egypt is playing a role we've also heard from turkey who has put forward some kind of peace proposal but certain at this stage it doesn't seem as it's as if either side is ready for peace what we're hearing from both the israelis and hamas is that the only prepared to lay down arms if the other side does so first. of course should be keeping up

there. as well simply follow her twitter stream for the latest. when all of the arabic correspondents are key had been working in the media office in gaza just before israeli rockets hit and this is what he told us earlier. had. no one expected this during the strikes power supplies often get cut off and then it becomes really difficult for us to find fuel for the generator at that we decided to take a break in our working to look for gas so that we can continue working early in the morning we left at around one am and added to it all happen some of our friends are now in hospital just a little while ago there was a press conference where it was said that such an attack must be completely ruled out as a journalist can become targets for strikes the correspondent should share what he or she sees with the world even israeli journalists report from gaza it's unacceptable that media workers get attacked in such a way in situations like this we usually don't go to our homes just like we did

maturing the hostilities of two thousand and eight in two thousand and nine democrat even though we know this is really dangerous up to the point of a ground operation however we prefer to stay at the office using any chance to do our job whenever the electricity comes on and when the electricity was off we decided to go look for generator fuel and that's what saved us we're talking about four tower blocks that have been used by media outlets since two thousand but during the war in two thousand and eight two thousand and nine israel struck these buildings to some of our colleagues were injured and we know that we do a dangerous job. we're going to be live from jerusalem israeli defense force spokesperson of a tel leave it well as we've just heard the. office was hit and damaged and you're saying that your precision bombing is only targeting terrorists can you explain to us why for a media offices being targeted and also we're hearing that no warning is being given of these attacks. well this is

a classic case where hamas is using civilians this time journalists as human shields we're talking about two media buildings indeed but on the roofs of these media buildings must. wisely positioned a whole system of communications and electronics for its own personal operational work we targeted only these and ten as these communications center and i spread films earlier today showing this exactly and you can see an accurate hit on the roof none of the floors were targeted of course there was a little bit of. it as a result of the explosive some windows shattered and so on but they reckon was not the floors but rather and ted that was the communications center was on the roof. and of course by doing this you are putting journalists at risk and you by definition of accepted that you are using foreign journalists as human shields is

the main aim really to prevent reporters doing their job after all i spoke to one earlier who was frightened to go to broadcast centers now to tell the world what is going on are you denying journalists the ability to tell the detail and truth of what is happening in gaza is that your own. belief that war as i aimed it probably would have closed the gaza strip in would have not allowed anyone to go in but on the contrary gaza is open and we want the journalists to come and see what's going on in gaza now the threat is not an israeli threat the threat is the fact that every day there is ongoing rocket fire from gaza into israel an average of all over one hundred thirty rockets a day all of them almost are fired from civilian areas inside the gaza strip are in the journalists afraid of this situation are you giving warnings are you saying that you are actually giving warnings ahead of these bombings. we are giving a very general warning and i can repeat it here general warning israeli and reduce

isn't it general warning when you go when you're knocking out communication centers how can you give a warning even if it is general. we exploded in and ten out on the roof we didn't target any floor or any person in that building i think that if a journalist chooses to locate himself near hamas facility that's a mistake. could you also explain that today one of your bombs has just hit a house in gaza killing ten civilians including children it was reported in the home of a hamas official who wasn't even there at the time so clearly your intelligence was accurate and yet innocents did die in that attack why did that happen. well you know innocents died many times in the israeli side as well and i think the coverage and your questions are on balance that all after all we're looking at more than a decade of rockets landing in israel every day he doesn't come from the sky it came

from hamas of islam in jihad and other organizations we are now in operation defending half of this country's population and we're determined to continue with this operation until we bring some peace and quiet to this country the equation is very clear if there will be quiet in israel there will be peace and quiet in gaza you say you're determined to continue this operation a quote that you're going to expand this operation which presumably means a ground invasion already we've heard from the u.k. that you would lose sympathy and support for your cause if you did that is that any concern. ground operation is only one option we have many options in addition to that currently there is no such decision to launch a ground operation but if there will be one we are ready and deployed for action oh what's the aim of this ground invasion bearing in mind you did do a ground invasion four years ago where is that lead us to.

well four years ago it was a totally different situation four years ago hamas didn't have fired or five iranian manufactured rockets that can hit all the way the to the city of tel aviv four years ago hamas did have the drone capabilities drones that can be manned with . explosives and explode themselves into industry israeli skies this is a whole different situation we will do whatever we need to do ground or air in order to protect half of this country's population because naturally israel like just like any other country in the world has the basic right of self-defense your interior ministry says that one of the aims is to send the. gaza back to the middle ages which really implies your you are targeting an entire people there what was the message behind that statement. i'm not a spokesperson for the minister of interior i'm a spokesperson from the idea and on and on that one of the goals of the i.d.f.

here is to cripple the capabilities of the different organizations in gaza cripple them of their huge arsenals an arsenal that be built for years and years they smuggled weapons through hundreds of tunnels in gaza has served in the last couple of years is the backyard of many deserts in africa making it a lot more convenient to smuggle weapons inside the country you're not a spokesman for the interior ministry but perhaps you could at least give us some sort of idea what they're implying here you must be on the same message board with them aren't you in effect having the same message what do they mean that by that returning to the middle ages. once again i'm not a spokesperson for the ministry the goal of this operation pillar of defense is divided to two the first part is to defend the israeli population three and a half million israelis under current rocket danger for the past decade the second part is to make sure these terror going to. are getting

a very severe blow for the arsenals for the huge amounts of rockets launchers launching sites so we can leave peacefully and quietly just like any other country in the in the world you make a very persuasive argument but of course what the international community is really concerned about now is the increasing number of civilian deaths now last night i spoke with one of your colleagues and he claimed that hamas is actually rounding up civilians to shield targets you're about to bomb now now how can a mass possibly know your exact targets and respond quickly enough. hamas is targeting only israeli cities you're more than welcome to spend just two hours in one of the biggest israeli cities that were targeted for the past two years either beer sheva or ashkelon which dog each of these cities have more than two hundred thousand people did you ever feel what it's like to run into a shelter and have fifteen seconds to do it or to raise children in a family inside a shelter protected room and sleep there night after night this is not something

normal that should not be this way when of course we can ask ourselves we can also gardens the same question of course but in the meantime thank you very much indeed for joining us live on a no wait wait a minute i beg to differ and i beg to differ because you can't make this equation hamas the star getting civilians we are not looking to target civilians we are targeting terrorists why is that i ask you then the very reason the core reason why this is happening is because of israeli policy towards the gazans the way they've been suffering from this blockade that has been the provocation has. well blockade there is a border to rejig the roughest border it's open do you know that every day we allow patients from gaza to get hospitalization in israel despite the rocket fire do you know that we supply electricity to gaza we supply truckloads with supplies every day even today it's a matter of fact more than one hundred thirty trucks who entered gaza with a variety of supplies according to the requests despite of the rocket fire but

other country in the world to act this way live from jerusalem israeli defense forces spokesperson avatar liberates thank you very much indeed for your time. went on air and also online we bring you the latest from the middle east would love updates on our twitter stream and web site on dot com. another tough week for the eurozone as we report later on here on our t.v. the single currency block is officially back in recession after twenty four hour pan-european mega strike brought some twenty countries to a standstill plus. china gets its next chairman jim ping leading a new group of officials to herald the country's growth further in a few moments we look at what problems beijing's blistering economy might face.

catalonia wants to get its independence from the rest of spain locals feel that madrid texas all of catalonia economic success is a way putting the region into debt trust me working hard only to have it all taxed away is very aggravating i can see why people are frustrated but the people who want independence have a very odd slogan catalonia a new european state so let me get this straight you want independence but you want to stay in the e.u. is that what you mean what exactly would that change that's not really gaining independence that shifting dependencies stay in the e.u. means you won't have control of your borders you'll still be on the euro so you won't have your own currency you will be able to establish your trade standards those will be dictated to you by brussels and if you don't like the austerity measures from outsiders like in madrid then you might want have

a conversation with the greeks because being an independent country in the e.u. won't save you from people messing with your finances all i'm saying is that big truly independent means answer to no one not madrid not brussels but that's just my opinion. maybe you see it in. my daddy. a lot of.

there's a famous reuse benson flavors on my c.v. . rancid business. party life here in moscow the sex scandal which claimed the head of the cia former general david petraeus this week turned on the man that took over from him as commander of the u.s. military in afghanistan general john allen's career is now in trouble after it was revealed he had also exchanged e-mails with a temper socialite tresses extra marital affair former cia boss trainer stepped down after admitting to a covert relationship with his biographer paula broadwell she's been looked at by the f.b.i. over allegations she gained access to some of his classified data he however denies

any leaks let's now discuss the scandal with. john is a former u.s. army intelligence officer who served in afghanistan for four years or should say lieutenant colonel british so i. thank you very much indeed for being with us now you do say. patris shouldn't have resigned over the extra magic affair he should have resigned over the way in which he handled afghanistan while i can explain that . first of all thank you for having me on and i spent four and a half years in afghanistan where i was a senior advisor for the ministry of interior and out of that came my latest book afghanistan the perfect phrase and now this book was published in september it was before the. broadwell affair however i'm very critical of general. betray us because. he should have resigned when his counterinsurgency

strategy failed to produce results and here's the real problem with that his counterinsurgency strategy which cannot deny that places i higher premium on the lives of the afghan civilians and. our own soldiers as a result our soldiers are forced to take more and more risks in an effort to win the afghan civilians to the side of the government in theory it's not bad to try to win the hearts and minds that's always a good thing going to counterinsurgency strategy but the fatal flaw in his strategy in afghanistan is that the afghans average afghan civilians fear the afghan government more then they do the tali bonn and that explains why after eleven years we have made no significant progress against a colleague gone because the people distrust the government i'm mostly responsible

as a fundamental problem and you saying that mistake was responsible for the deaths of two men a u.s. soldier is. what the problem is i. recognize that iraq is an entirely different scene. better than afghanistan and as a result my focus was only on afghanistan and while we may have had a certain success in iraq it does not automatically translate that you can do the same thing in afghanistan afghanistan has an entirely different flavor of that and then iraq first of all iraq was basically a conflict between sunni and shia in afghanistan you have any number of trops that break along all kinds of different lines iraq had a more stable government and was more developed than afghanistan afghanistan was pretty much in shambles so any comparison you draw between those two is suspect and

that's why i focus only on afghanistan what about the military surge stand that operation what was not a success that he was behind. what the problem with the sure and you're talking about the surge that we started in early two thousand and ten where we injected thirty thousand more soldiers into that conflict the problem was with the surge simply put more people in combat and put more people at risk due to this failed counterinsurgency strategy so the reality is in afghanistan this sure produced nothing more than more american casualties and so instead of changing the strategy the leadership simply doubled down on a failed policy and those are the points that i make that dutch my big complaint with afghanistan you are highly critical of the train is what you may call the

timing of all this the fast and the consequences now that it's affected his career is there a feeling within washington that he was a failure and in fact something had to be done about it. i try very. hard not to speculate about seeing so that i don't have direct knowledge i realize there's a lot of discussions going on that to tommy is suspect and that it was all done for political purposes we still have the unanswered questions of. the issue but as for as far as his relationship. with miss broadwell. i. i understand that but i give him much lower marks for his. actions in combat than i do and a bedroom first of all he was hired to win a war pure and simple all right he didn't do that ad never the less what you say he

is being championed as a military hero. clearly you got very strong reasons for writing this book but do you think you're going against public sentiment just briefly by writing this very critical book of betrayal what really motivates you. why doesn't bother me to go against public sentiment because sometimes we take our military leaders and we build a very nice resume for them and it catches on and everybody starts to drink and from the same well i hold our military commanders to a very costly under look we put young men in riskier and they give it everything they've got and if the policy has failed we have young man and how schools right now all over this country that will die in afghanistan next summer for no other reason than propping up a corrupt interlocking criminal enterprise which is what the karzai government has become that's my real problem with it i was

a soldier for over twenty years so i care deeply about those young men and women lieutenant colonel john l. code former u.s. army intelligence officer as you say seven in afghanistan for four years very interesting to hear your experience and your perspective of this thank you very much indeed for joining us live in altie. on our side from conflict with hamas in gaza israel has also been fighting on its northern front the israeli defense force confirmed they fired artillery into neighboring syria in response to gunfire aimed at its troops in the disputed golan heights it's the first time in forty years israel has fired into syria that came amid reports rebels captured an airport in the east to syria striking a hold of the iraqi border plus this week western attempts to als president assad to gain momentum with france and turkey recognizing the new opposition group the national coalition the ministers are expected to discuss lifting an arms embargo on monday paving the way for direct weapons deliveries to rebels the run is already responded saying that would amount to organized terrorism john as neil clark says

the west is using the libya blueprint in syria. what we do is we get together some opposition puppets if you like not their heads together call them the government of libya and syria and then we work to end the arms embargoes and very soon we'll be hearing talk i expect no fly zones this is all part of a plan to topple assad actually with western powers actually glaring it's ok for us to arm the rebels in syria but for anybody else to arm the syrians it's not allowed so it's absolutely appalling their policy we had the constitutional blow back in eighty seven so the syrians voted for it we had elections in may you know there is a every possibility of a trial of change in syria through the ballot box but the west don't want that because they know the present stage to popular party probably majority support in syria the last one is the people's will in syria to prevail they want to impose by force a puppet government. and what would happen in libya mark to it

a series topple we have lost in syria more chaotic and more death and destruction but the west doesn't really care about that he doesn't care what's happening in libya at the moment all he cares about is a new government in damascus which will probably tie the entire economy the links with iran and hezbollah. that you know that the move against iraq. to take place because all of the regular way toward. the euro zone has been hit by a second recession according to figures published on thursday this just hours after twenty four hour strikes or more than twenty european countries virtually paralyzed people want to go invented the frustration over disintegrating economies first reports. saying. greece. italy. and portugal. debt ridden countries joining together with many others for the continent's first cross border mega strike from the beginning it was clear that emotions were running high in many

places the dreadful violence early on and asked. the storm broke and the anger of those protesting was evident for various things between the protesters and the riot police is. almost three hundred it's not hard to really get more symbolic candy for the he stood by the people say there are right now all across there are the three legged government and between the people themselves that is why they are there at the back there. where the bullets and violent confrontations with the authorities are becoming in on t. familiar sights the constant leaders stance the disparity is a necessary evil to cut the sky high deficit only bend the fourteenth the people of europe seem to have formed a county union to fight back against the prevailing title sterrett city ahead of next week's budget meeting brussels will have been watching closely as the scenes of police and protesters battling one another played out across the nobel peace

prize winning. r.t. the dreaded. protests over cuts turn violent in the most debt burden european states like italy portugal and spain where unemployment is at unprecedented levels so shortage of scholars still closs who took part in wednesday's strike believes that with the rather hoff of young spaniards already out of work more cuts won't save anything. a protest isn't about a solution a protest is normally about something you don't want so in this case what they're protesting is easy to austerity is cuts in social spending and cuts in social rights and the expansion of social misery people can make the argument that austerity is a solution to the current problems being faced by your the european citizenry and in particular by the southern european citizenry the problem is what does that austerity mean is that neoliberal e.u. austerity where you cut basically all of those all of the social protection that keeps people from descending down to a sort of downward spiral.